In early March, Georgia’s Defense Ministry announced the details of the NATO-backed Noble Partner-2017 multinational drills, scheduled for July 30. Armenia and Azerbaijan are set to participate in the exercises, along with 11 other NATO partners and allies. Noble Partner will be the first large-scale practical NATO initiative gathering Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani troops to perform a common task. Moreover, Montenegro's NATO accession seems to have renewed the impetus for the South Caucasian states to reengage with the Alliance. However, the question is whether Yerevan and Baku are capable of defying Russia’s potential reaction to their renewed endeavor to cooperate with NATO in terms of joint exercises.

According to a recent survey by the U.S. National Democratic Institute, support for membership in the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) has doubled in Georgia since 2014, to 31 percent. Simultaneously, support for the trade agreement between Georgia and the EU fell from 80 percent before the Ukraine crisis to 68 percent in April 2015. Many commentators have linked this development with a temporal disappointment among Georgians with the country’s slow western integration following the Eastern Partnership (EaP) summit in Riga. Others stress the Russian “soft offensive” on Georgia conducted through Russian-sponsored media and NGOs. However, the underlying reasons for why increasing numbers of Georgians become receptive to demands for reorienting the country towards Russia may be deeper, less temporal and much more serious.